Cracks
by ncfan
Summary: Sometimes life doesn't make any sense, but if you're Amelia Pond then perhaps mercifully you don't notice.


I own nothing.

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><p>There's a crack in the wall of their home but neither Augustus, Tabetha, nor Michael Pond notice much. There are cracks in lots of homes, so why should this one be of any note at all? The answer is that it's not, and it goes unnoticed.<p>

Michael Pond is three years old and his mother is going to have another baby. She's just gotten back from the hospital and the news is in: it's a girl. He's going to have a baby sister, named Amelia after their grandmother. Michael doesn't know what he thinks of that. It'll be nice having another kid around to play with but baby sisters sound gross and when Amelia comes around his parents will pay more attention to her than to him.

Oh well. Michael will get his revenge with worms and mud.

One night, Michael stops by the bedroom all decked out with things for the baby and he notices something odd.

The crack in the wall, it's glowing. Michael doesn't ignore it or walk away; he doesn't call for his parents. Instead, he walks inside.

The crack is glowing, and on the other side, there's voices. One, two, three, a thousand. A multitude, a great throng. Michael stands mesmerized as the glow grows and gets brighter and brighter. Eventually, it's blinding, and he can't look away.

In the morning, Augustus and Tabetha go around with the good news. They're finally going to have a baby after so many years of trying so hard. She'll be the first of many if they have their way and their daughter is going to be called Amelia, after Augustus's mother.

Augustus and Tabetha Pond haven't got a care in the world; they're walking on air. They're just the couple in a big house with a baby on the way, with a spare bedroom off to the side.

-0-0-0-

Flash forward about seven years and Amelia doesn't like it in Leadworth at all. Most of the children she knows laugh unkindly at her bright red hair and her thick Scottish accent. When she talks they say "What? What did you say?". Amelia raises her voice and they start to snigger, cupping their hands around their ears. This is usually the point when Amelia pushes one of them down, preferably into a mud puddle and stomps back home, ignoring the cat calls that go behind.

Amelia's parents are dead, but she doesn't think about that much. It's all very confusing; one moment they were there and then they just weren't. No blood, no bodies, no nothing; they just disappeared while visiting Aunt Sharon. They just weren't there, and no one seemed able to remember where Amy had come from. The police came, ran her name through the records and when they were finally able to determine just who she was Amelia was told to stay with her aunt Sharon in England.

It's funny. For the life of her, Amelia can't remember what her parents looked like. This doesn't bother her nearly as much as it should—Amelia just doesn't think about these things the way other children do.

Come to think of it, Aunt Sharon can't remember what Amelia's parents looked like either. She can't remember their names or how old they were, but she doesn't seem to mind this either. She just accepts Amelia without comment and its as though she's always lived there.

-0-0-0-

Lots of children have pets at some point in their lives; Amelia Pond is by no means unique.

Amelia has such difficulty making friends—the children all shy away from her and she sticks her tongue out and makes faces when teased—and Sharon, frazzled beyond recall, stops by a pet store one day on the way home and when she sees what's in the window, she has an idea.

His name is Caspar. He's a three-month-old brown tabby kitten with the most enormous amber eyes, and when Amelia sees him she squeals so loudly that Sharon's sure people in the next house can hear her.

Amelia will tell anyone, quite enthusiastically, about her new kitten. Caspar catches mice and leaves them on the front doorstep, she declares proudly, much to the disgust of her classmates. Caspar sleeps on the edge of Amelia's bed or sometimes on the pillow with her and purrs into her ear. When Amelia rounds corners sometimes Caspar is there, ready to pounce and chew on her ankle until Amelia picks him up and pets him.

One night while Amelia is downstairs, pouring herself a cup of milk, Caspar starts to paw at her bedroom wall.

A week later, when the teachers ask around, Amelia Pond will tell anyone who listens that she's never had a pet in her life and no one questions her.

Amelia Pond isn't much of a cat person either. She doesn't know why, but every time she sees a little tabby alley cat shoot past her she wants to cry. Dogs are better, but Aunt Sharon won't let her have one.

Oh well. A dog would probably track mud in the house anyway.

-0-0-0-

Aunt Sharon is away the night Amelia Pond meets her Raggedy Doctor. Well, so Amelia thinks. There are things aside from the extra door that her Raggedy Doctor should have noticed but didn't. He should have noticed the dust on Sharon's door knob. He should have noticed that Amelia Pond can cook much better than any seven-year-old has a right to. He should have noticed that this little girl is all too used to being alone. Perhaps if he had he would have been more motivated to get back in five minutes like he said he would.

No matter. This is the night Amelia's life changes forever.

Finally, someone's listening to her about the crack. Finally someone can hear the voices on the other side like her and is paying attention to her. Santa sent a man who can fix the crack.

Now if only he'd come back, Amelia ponders to herself the next morning when her Raggedy Doctor hasn't returned.

-0-0-0-

Even if Amelia doesn't notice anything off, even if memory fades from her head, eventually the town does.

A woman in a blue dress suit with wildly curly hair comes up one day with a couple of books in her arms and a concerned smile on her face.

"Hello, sweetie. Can I speak to your parents?"

"Haven't got any."

"Oh. Can I speak to your aunt or your uncle then?"

"Haven't got any."

The woman's smile falters. "Then who's here with you?"

Amelia shrugs. "No one. I've always been by myself."

That's the point when the woman asks to be let in so she can use the phone.

In the end, there are police cars swarming Amelia's house and by the time they come the curly-haired woman has left. What she's left behind are two picture books: one is the story of Pandora's Box, and the other a picture book about Ancient Romans.

No one really wants to take Amelia on into their foster home. At the same time, no one's sure why. She's a pleasant little girl when her temper doesn't get the better of her; she's bright and relatively pretty. She just has this incredibly eerie feel about her and there's one word anyone and everyone can use to sum up Amelia Pond:

Uncanny.

So, instead, someone goes to live with her.

Well, they try to.

Over the next few years, Amelia goes through several foster parents and four psychiatrists. She takes care to bite only the latter and not the former.

Meanwhile, the Universe just keeps right on pouring into her head.

-0-0-0-

Amelia Pond dies to give birth to Amy Pond for a reason.

Her Raggedy Doctor left her, and even if Amy knows he was real she does listen to some of the things the psychiatrists say.

Amy can't keep on living in a fairytale, hence the name drop. "Amelia" is too much like a fairytale.

Amy doesn't have to worry about certain things like Amelia did. Amy doesn't have to worry about the crack in her wall. Amy doesn't have to look at photographs and wonder who all those people in them were. She doesn't have to wonder why so many little things don't make sense.

-0-0-0-

And as quick as Amy abandons "Amelia", she gets her Raggedy Doctor back and she gets to be Amelia again, somewhere inside. Of course, there are still things that don't make sense, but now Amy has another way of ignoring them.

Of course things don't make sense when she's around the Doctor, because he's well, _the Doctor,_ and everything goes screwy and haywire around him anyway.

-0-0-0-

Amy Pond isn't the marrying kind. She never has been. She's never had a boyfriend, never found someone who she was interested in or was interested in her, because even though Amy grew to be a knockout she still had that eerie aura around her. That sense of wrongness tends to drive men away.

And to be honest, Amy's never been sold on the whole idea of "find a man, get married, have tons and tons of ginger-haired children and grow old and die".

Really, who came up with that one?

-0-0-0-

Sometimes, life doesn't make any sense. Sometimes, it doesn't make any sense at all. Sometimes, the reasons life doesn't make any sense are mild, explainable, relatively benign. Sometimes, they exist within the realm of normalcy and they can be explained by human knowledge.

Sometimes, they can't.

Sometimes, those reasons aren't apparent, and they're beyond the realm of human understanding. Sometimes, those reasons are so far from benign that to call them malignant doesn't even begin to describe exactly what they are.

Sometimes, life doesn't make any sense, and it doesn't make sense for all the wrong reasons. But if you're Amelia Pond, then perhaps mercifully you don't notice.

At least, not at first.

"_They fall out of the world sometimes, but they always leave traces. Little things you can't quite account for. Faces in photographs, luggage, half-eaten meals. Rings. Nothing is ever forgotten, not completely."_

If she'd noticed all these things from the first Amy probably would have thought she was going mad and eventually would have gone mad herself. If she'd noticed all of it from the start she would have fallen to pieces. That's just something the time cracks do: they assuage the affected by erasing their memories. And it would have worked, would have worked on anyone but Amy.

Amy has had the Universe pouring into her head all this time, and she's not the most normal of human beings because of it.

She remembers the two clerics who were swallowed by the crack in the Byzantium. Their own colleagues don't remember them but Amy does. The Doctor says it's because she's a time traveler now but the Doctor doesn't always tell the whole truth and Amy can tell from his voice that there's something he's not telling her.

Amy starts to cry from to time without knowing why. Vincent notices; he smiles his melancholic smile and _"Oh Amy. I hear the song of your sadness. You've lost someone, I think."_ That's the problem though; Amy _doesn't know_ why she's crying.

There's something horribly familiar about that ring. Amy can't place it but she feels like she's seen it before; she's tried the thing on and it fits her ring finger perfectly. Something aches in her when the Doctor talks about the friend he lost.

That centurion, the one who killed the Cyberman. Amy doesn't know why (_a common occurrence these days_) but she likes him the moment she sees him. Maybe it's just because he's one of the "hot Italians", but she immediately trusts him, even if he unnerves her, just a little bit. Two emotions rule whenever Amy looks at the centurion: the urge to smile and the need to cry.

And she doesn't know why.

Except now she does, and yet doesn't.

-0-0-0-

The Doctor smiles a bit tremulously as he looks down at the sleeping Amelia Pond, laid out in her bed.

Tomorrow morning, Earth and the Universe will be back to the way it's supposed to be. Tomorrow morning, the cracks in the skin of the universe will close and stay closed, just like they should be.

_"_—_eating away at your life."_

In the morning, Amelia will get it all back.

She'll have her brother again, her parents again, her aunt again, her Rory, and even her kitten as well.

She won't have the Doctor. She'll barely even remember him, except as her Raggedy Doctor, her imaginary (or perhaps not so much) friend.

But it's worth it. And you know, maybe that's the way it should be.

"Bye-bye, Pond."

-0-0-0-

"_Nothing is ever forgotten, not completely. And if something can be remembered, it can come back."_

The Doctor's gone. Erased. He never existed at all, all to give Amy her life back.

Maybe that's the way it should be, except Amy Pond does not agree.

You see, that's the thing about a girl who's had the Universe pouring into her head. She can do things other people can't. She can bring people back if she really wants to and she tries hard enough, and Amy _really _wants the Doctor back.

Amelia Pond doesn't give a damn if the Universe itself kicked the Doctor out of reality. If that's the case, the Universe can go to Hell. Amy will have her Raggedy Doctor back, cracks or no cracks, universe or no universe, reality or no reality.

"I remember you, Raggedy Man, and you are late to my wedding!"

That's when the whole Universe starts to tremble.

The tears start to prick at Amy's eyes again and she smiles. She can't remember the last time she was so insanely _happy_. It's close now.

"Something old, something new, something borrowed, something _blue_."

And so is reborn the brand new ancient blue box.

He made it to her wedding after all.


End file.
